Patrick Air Force Base

Location: Florida

Also Known As: Banana River Naval Air
Station

Historical Summary

Patrick Air Force Base is about 20 miles south of Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station and is home to the 45th Space Wing, the
organization responsible for operations at Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station. For more detailed information, see the
Organization and Installation Name
History.

Originally a U.S. Navy seaplane base known as the
Banana River
Naval Air Station during World War II, the base was inactivated in
1947. The Navy transferred the Banana River Naval Air Station to the
Air Force on 1 September 1948 in anticipation of a requirement for
establishment of a missile test range extending into the
Bahamas. The base was renamed the Joint Long Range Proving Ground
Base on 10 June 1949. On 1 October 1949, the Joint Long Range
Proving Ground organization was activated with the U.S. Army
assuming the first command of that new Joint activity. The name for
the base was changed on 17 May 1950 to the Long Range Proving Ground
Air Force Base. Effective 1 August 1950, the base was renamed
Patrick Air Force Base, in honor of Major General Mason M. Patrick
(photo left).
General Patrick had been Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces
Air Services in World War I and Chief of the Air Service/U.S. Army
Air Corps from October 1921 until his retirement on 13 December
1927. The official dedication ceremony for the newly named base was
held on 26 August 1950. The photo (above right) shows what the base
looked like at about the time of its name change to Patrick Air
Force Base.

Matador Launch

Patrick Air Force Base is not a designated launch site, but there is an instance of a single
unusual launch that took place
from Patrick Air Force Base. It
was Armed Forces Day, 20 May 1956, and a Matador was launched from
the airfield off the north end of the Patrick Air Force Base main
runway. The event was covered in the
25
May 1956 issue of the Missileer base newspaper.

The Matador was set up on a mobile launcher with a
sandbagged launch control area about 50 yards to the left of the
launcher. Thousands of spectators were in attendance and kept back
several hundred yards from the launcher.

Prior to launch, traffic on highway A1A was stopped. As launch
time approached, the Matador's jet engine accelerated to full power
and was tested for performance. The noise level to this point was
not unusual to spectators familiar with hearing jet aircraft take
off. At the appointed time, the Rocket Assisted Take-Off (RATO)
bottle hanging beneath the rear of the Matador was ignited and the
Matador leaped from the launcher, traveling over highway A1A and the
beach and then flying out over the Atlantic Ocean. The extremely
loud noise from the sudden RATO bottle ignition reportedly startled some of the
observers. The RATO bottle, at burnout, fell into the ocean and was
recovered.

Technical Laboratory Missile Display

Long-time residents of the area and many visitors to the Space
Coast recall a
missile display that once stood in front of the Technical Laboratory
on highway A1A at Patrick Air Force Base. The Technical Laboratory
is now home to the Air Force Technical Applications Center, but the
missile displays were removed over the years due to
deterioration and weather damage. Between 1956 and 1996, nine
missiles were on display at various times -- Matador, Snark, Bomarc,
Pershing, Polaris, Thor, Atlas, Titan and Minuteman.

The display became quite a tourist attraction, especially before
there was any public access to the Cape. There was no other place to
see real missiles. Tourists from all over the world flocked to the
Technical Laboratory (Tech Lab, as it was called) for a look. Times
were different then. There were no fences nor gates at Patrick Air
Force Base and visitors could easily pull off of highway A1A into
the Tech Lab parking lot for a view. The displays became so popular
that the Air Force Missile Test Center
prepared a brochure, companies produced post cards, and one oil
company even used the site on the cover of their Florida roadmap for
distribution to travelers at their service stations. View the photo
gallery at left to see a sampling of the missile display
memorabilia.